When Nigerian born Chris Abani was introduced this morning, it was pointed out that not only was he an award winning poet, but he had also won an award as a “Distinguished Humanist”. It took very little time for me to understand why such an honor was bestowed upon him.
He took the stage to share his essay “Stories of Struggle, Stories of Hope: Art, Politics and Human Rights” and opened with two poems - The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart by Jack Gilbert and one of his own poems 2001.
Mr. Abani spoke honestly about his unvarnished self, his hopes and fears and his envious hate of people who wrote better poetry then him (Jack Gilbert). I found him to be warm, funny and unflinching in his willingness to sharing his truth with us.
Here are some things he said that provoked me in a most wonderful way:
(forgive my paraphrase and please correct me if I mess this up)
1. Writers must negotiate ethics as part of writing. They are obligated to capture and write what they bear witness to. Writers and other artists are in a unique position to stand before the abyss common to all humanity and look deeply into it with courage. It is the artist’s job to use art to catalog our human nature without sentimentality.
2. All humans wish to live free of fear, pain and affliction. Some people hold too firmly to hatred because to abandon hate requires that you face the pain of what caused that hate to begin with.
3. The purposeful narrative is an effective device to draw out evil. By sharing the darkness of humanity with the world in a safe way the writer can transform it into something that brings healing.
4. To find your way to the sublime one must journey through the darkness and experience elements of the grotesque. The grotesque is necessary to transforms one’s world view.
5. To be human is to understand that there can never be world peace but to live like world peace is possible anyway.
One of the stories he told beautifully demonstrated the transformative powers of art.
As a young man he worked on his father’s rice farm. While the women worked to plant the rice during springtime they sang a sorrowful dirge that included all of the names of people that had died as a result of a recent civil war. When they harvested the rice later in the season, they sang a much happier ditty calling out all the names of the children recently born. Through the art of their work songs the village women acknowledged the community’s grief and celebrated the renewal of hope for the community’s future.
Through his presentation and the sheer radiance of his being, Chris Abani encouraged us all to become the courageous artists that this world needs. I suspect that his concluding words at the podium brought many in the crowd to tears (besides me). "May you cry but never die of a broken heart." Thank you Chris!
I think one of the most profound moments in Chris's conversation was when he said he had learned to be humble. I contemplated exactly what that meant as a writer and as a human being and I truly believe the work of the human soul is to find that place where we can exist in humility. I commend Chris for his honesty. It is only when we seek the smallness of the soul that we can grow outside of the confines of who we are. Thank you, Chris, for sharing your incredible insights. Kelly Hopkins
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